Question
First i will explain my situation. I have a folder that has a lot of sublevels and one of those subfolders contains the file i need. main folder subfolder1 subfolder1.1 subfolder1.1.1 subfolder1.1.2 subfolder1.1.3 File.sldd subfolder1.1.4 ... subfolder1.2 ... subfolder2 ... I know the name of the file: File.sldd But now I want to know the full path of the file so i can add this file to my current folder and open it with fopen(). The main folder is already added to my current folder. Is there a command that has the name of the file as input and gives me the path as output? Or is there a quick way to get the path of the file?
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Expert Answer
John Michell
PhD Expert
Answered Nov 20, 2025
That is completely unnecessary. You don't need to (and shouldn't) add the folder of the file to the path in order to open it with fopen. Just pass the full path of the file to fopen.
There is no function in matlab to do what you want (yet! there will be in R2014b). You have to recurse through the directory using dir. This should work:
function filefolder = findfile(root, filename)
dircontent = dir(fullfile(root, '*'));
if any(strcmpi({dircontent(~[dircontent.isdir]).name}, filename)) %case insensitive comparison. Works for Windows only.
%file is found in directory
filefolder = root;
else
%look in subdirectories
for subdir = dircontent([dircontent.isdir] & ~ismember({dircontent.name}, {'.', '..'}))'
filefolder = findfile(fullfile(root, subdir.name), filename);
if ~isempty(filefolder)
%found in a directory, all done
return;
end
end
%looked in all subdirectories and not found
filefolder = ''; %return empty
end
end
You can then do:
folder = findfile(mainfolder, 'File.sldd'); fid = fopen(fullfile(folder, 'File.sldd'));
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